By John Winborn

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SSL Use Among Million Busiest Sites Up by 48% Year-Over-Year: Netcraft Survey

2013 was a banner year for the SSL industry, according to Netcraft‘s January 2014 web server survey, which it published the results of last week. Since the January 2013 survey, SSL use among the million busiest sites has increased by 48 percent.

Netcraft attributes the increase to the leaked NSA documents, and the volume of publicity they have received. The total number of SSL certificates has increased by half a million, or 22 percent, over the past year, and the SSL industry’s estimated total revenue has increased by 28 percent from September 2012 to September 2013.

The January survey received responses from 861,379,152 sites, an increase of over 350,000 from December 2013. The January survey focuses on changes over the last calendar year.

Apache gained 10M sites over the year, but with the 231M (37 percent) total growth in web sites, the leading server’s market share has fallen by 14 percent to 42 percent.

Nginx market share fell back to 14 percent, and the open-source option has been up and down since peaking at 16 percent in October.

Microsoft increased its market share to near 30 percent, a 39 percent increase and the highest share of the market it has held since mid-2009. This growth has been driven in part by Azure, where Microsoft’s IIS “is by far the most common web server.” With a Brazil Azure Region going live in early 2014, Microsoft’s server market share is poised to continue its strong growth.